Erbitux extends NSCLC survival up to 15 months

Data presented at this year's Chicago Multidisciplinary Symposium in Thoracic Oncology show that patients with non-small cell lung cancer who were given Merck Serono's Erbitux (cetuximab) plus standard first-line platinum-based chemotherapy lived significantly longer than those who received chemotherapy alone.

According to the German drugmaker, this effect was more pronounced in patients treated with Erbitux who developed early acne-like rash, resulting in median overall survival of 15 months.

In the overall population of the FLEX trial, the addition of Erbitux to chemotherapy prolonged median overall survival from 10.1 to 11.3 months (p=0.04). The new analysis demonstrated that overall survival for patients receiving Erbitux, who experienced any grade of rash within three weeks of treatment initiation, was 15.0 months compared to 8.8 months in those with no rash (p<0.001), making it an important indicator for longer survival.